It’s impossible to tell if there is any validity to this story in We Are The Mighty. Their mission is “Capturing, empowering, and celebrating the voice of today’s military community,” but I’m skeptical. It seems more likely their mission is generating click-bait revenue from the military community, but I could be wrong. There’s almost no additional information in the post, other than to say they didn’t adopt them. Check out the story The Marine Corps tested a skateboard unit in the 1990s if you dare. If you leave the window open long enough, it will eventually crash.
The Marines used store-bought, off-the-shelf, skateboards during Urban Warrior to detect tripwires in buildings and draw sniper fire, among other uses. What the Marines really took away from its experimentation with combat skateboards is that standard knee and elbow pads were useless for American troops fighting in urban centers and specialized ones would have to be obtained.
3 comments
Scout 6
Operation Urban Warrior was a real thing. It was concieved of by the Marine Corps Combat Development Lab at Marine Base Quantico. 800 Marines were issued “T block” camoflauge uniforms, and an unverfied but rumored 40 Marines were issued skateboards. Nobody knows the make or model, or hardware information. They were all stripped of paint, and sprayed a dark olive drab/grey color.
-From a US Marine infantry veteran
skatchface
I visited the USMC base in San Diego around 2000 my first and only trip to CA. They had a terrible excuse for a skatepark on the base. It was def a certified piece of suck but it was an official Military base skatepark.
orezona
It’s likely that the servicemembers on base were the ones who actually built the park using whatever scrap they could find around so not surprising in the least it was sketchified. The cool part is whoever was in charge there allowed them to do that and keep it in place. Probably saw it as a morale booster.